A study of intuitive electric wheelchair control interface based on weight shift

Abstract

Because of rapidly growing aging society in Japan, the rule of electric wheelchair becomes important to enhance the mobility for elderly person. The aim of our study is to develop the electric wheelchair which is driven as the human intention. We try to extract the human intention from the weight shift on wheelchair sheet instead of conventional joystick device. To design the system, we develop the experimental electric wheelchair that can measure weight shift from wheelchair sheet. According to value of weight shift measurement, we infer the driverpsilas intension based on fuzzy logic. To control the vehicle based on the driverpsilas intension, cognitive aspect implementation and safety aspect implementation are applied. These two different aspects of implementations are tested by checked KANSEI approach.